Building balancing act for Liebherr

Liebherr recently held a ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of a new logistics centre in Kirchdorf an der Iller, Germany, where the company was founded in 1949.

Liebherr-Hydraulikbagger, part of the German manufacturing group, currently produces about 3,000 hydraulic excavators, material handlers and articulated dump trucks per year at the site, and the company has no intention of slowing production even while the centre is being demolished and reconstructed.

The biggest challenge of the €35 million project lies in the fact that the demolition of the existing warehouse and the construction of the new one are both taking place while operations continue at the facility.

In order to guarantee the supply of materials during the process, the construction is being carried out in two phases.

The first phase – which is due to be completed by the end of 2019 – will see the building of a new incoming goods area with a high-bay warehouse. The planned airlock for lorries will have a 20-tonne crane system designed to make it easier to receive goods.

The second stage of construction will involve building another high-bay warehouse and a logistics area for order picking, consolidation and packaging. The work stations will be fitted with modern technical systems, and the facility’s complex logistical requirements will be supported by a warehouse management system. Also, for day-to-day work, it was said that employees will have access to modern picking vehicles with a driving assistance system.

Matthias Herzog, production manager at Liebherr-Hydraulikbagger, said, “With the restructuring and the optimisation of the material flow, the logistics centre for production will make an important contribution in the future to efficient and high-quality production.”

Once completed in 2020, the new centre will have a floorspace of more than 23,5000m2.